Sweet Briar College names alumna 14th president

Sweet Briar College will keep Mary Pope Maybank Hutson as its president permanently after serving as interim president since July, the private women’s college announced Thursday.

Hutson is the 14th president of Sweet Briar and the Amherst County school’s first alumna president. A 1983 graduate with a degree in international affairs, Hutson served as Sweet Briar’s senior vice president for alumnae relations since 2016. She has a background in public service and policy and served as executive vice president of the Land Trust Alliance in Washington, D.C., from 2002 to 2015. She has also been executive director of the Lowcountry Open Land Trust in South Carolina, and director of educational programs for the Historic Charleston Foundation.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Hutson worked for former U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms and later joined the Department of the Interior, where she served as Guam desk officer and as a liaison to the island of St. Thomas. In 1990, the George H.W. Bush White House appointed her special assistant to the U.S. ambassador to Kenya.

Her commitment to Sweet Briar goes back to her days as a student when she was a student leader and nationally ranked tennis payer. Hutson earned a spot in the college’s Athletics Hall of Fame.

When Sweet Briar was threatened with closure in 2015, she was among the alumnae who thwarted the administration’s effort to close the college. She joined the Board of Directors, then became part of the college’s administration as senior vice president for alumnae relations in January 2016. In July, Hutson replaced former President Meredith Woo on an interim basis. Woo, who became president in 2017 and announced in January that she would be stepping down, is a political science professor at Arizona State University.

In a statement, Hutson said: “The gifts of my Sweet Briar education to my life have been pivotal in my career and in my ability to give back to my community and my college, and I know we all need to be part of educating and mentoring young people while ensuring the sustainability of Sweet Briar for the next century.”

“After a meticulous and thorough process, led by a committed group of stakeholder representatives and under the expert guidance of our search firm, Russell Reynolds Associates, I am delighted with the board’s overwhelming and unanimous support of Mary Pope as Sweet Briar’s next president,” Mason Rummel, Sweet Briar’s board chair, said in a statement. “Not only does she embody the spirit and ethos of our beloved college, but she is also resolute in her determination to lead Sweet Briar to new heights as the leader in women’s higher education.”